This seated, lion-headed goddess is shown wearing a large sun disk with a uraeus serpent whose body trails over the top of her head. This statuette shows the ingenuity of Egyptian artists when trying to superimpose the face and mane of a lioness upon the traditional tripartite wig. Here, the wig’s front tresses, which take the form of vertical ringlet curls, emerge from the lower edge of the ruff of the mane. A beaded collar is represented between the lappets of the wig, but not on her shoulders. The goddess’s face has fine detail, with prominent pupils and whiskers on the sides of her muzzle. She wears a tight-fitting gown that accentuates her navel. The dress has no detail and is perceptible only from the hemline above her ankles. The goddess rests her hands on her lap. Her left hand is pierced to hold a now-lost scepter that was probably a flower-topped standard. Her right hand is fisted and lies flat alongside her thigh. Her feet rest on a trapezoidal base from which a rectangular 1.3 cm long tang extends from the bottom, allowing the statuette to be attached to a separate, throne-shaped base, now lost. The statuette is solid cast. The sun disk, which is convex on both sides, was cast as a separate piece and soldered or brazed to the top of the head and the ears.1

The front and proper right side of the base (only) are inscribed with a text that is banded with incised lines on top and bottom. It reads: the “[lion-headed] goddess gives life [to] Djedbastetinek[sy], son of Psamtek.”^[1] The donor’s name means “Bastet says she is mine.” The text presents some problems in interpretation. The name Djedbastetinek[sy], despite the use of a feminine “she,” was also used by men, leaving the gender of the donor ambiguous.^[2] Further, the single hieroglyph for the lion-headed goddess, 𓁴, which is positioned on the front surface of the base to function as a label for the statuette, could convey either Wadjet or Sekhmet because no further phonetic values are given. The name of the donor’s father Psamtek which was very common in Dynasty 26, suggests that date for this statuette.2

Additional Views of Cat. 26

Identification of the Deity

It can be very difficult to identify feline-headed statues because they can represent deities that are male (Mahes or Horus of Pe [see cat. 33]) or female (most commonly Sekhmet, Wadjet, or Mut).^[3] This example is clearly a goddess because of her breasts and dress. Here, the headgear is not diagnostic because Sekhmet, Wadjet, and Mut all can wear a sun disk with uraeus. Bernard Bothmer attempted to make a clear differentiation between these statues based on pose. He concluded that the seated figures were Wadjet and the standing ones were Sekhmet.^[4] Part of his rationale is that the throne of some of the seated examples served as a container for bones of an ichneumon (mongoose), an animal associated with Wadjet, and indeed, some of those statuettes were inscribed for her.^[5] More recently, Katja Weiß has argued against such a clear definition.^[6] She notes the hundreds of stone statues of seated, feline-headed goddesses with sun disks from Thebes (modern Luxor) that are clearly images of Sekhmet, suggesting that the pose alone is not diagnostic. Further, she emphasizes that the provenance of the statuette must also be considered, especially if the object lacks an identifying inscription. For example, standing, lion-headed statues from Buto, a center of the worship of Wadjet, certainly represent that goddess.3

The Chicago example poses further issues with its identification. Although seated, it is not attached to a throne-shaped base that might serve as a container for bones, so it falls outside of Bothmer’s corpus.^[7] The inscription does not help identify the goddess because, rather than the expected names Wadjet or Sekhmet, her name is not written phonetically but instead with the hieroglyph of a generic, seated goddess with a disk on her head holding an ostrich feather.^[8] The statue also has no provenance that might have been an aid to its identification. Because there are no sure diagnostic features, it is probably best to classify it as either Wadjet or Sekhmet.4

The sun disk worn by both Sekhmet and Wadjet marks them as daughters of the sun god Re. Sekhmet was associated with war, plague, and pestilence. She was one of the few deities who had a destructive nature, although Egyptian myths say that her anger was easily assuaged by beer and music. Her primary mythical association is the tale of “The Destruction of Mankind,” in which she vowed to kill humankind because they plotted against her father Re.^[9] In the effort to avert this massacre, the gods dyed vats of beer red and poured it over the land. Thinking it was the blood of the rebels, Sekhmet lapped it up, and in her drunkenness her anger abated. Sekhmet had an ambivalent nature; she could be a raging lioness, or a docile, domestic cat represented by the cat-headed Bastet, an observation clearly based on the behavior of ancient (and modern) house cats.5

Wadjet was the major deity of northern Egypt whose cult center was Buto in the north-central Delta. She was revered as the patron deity of northern Egypt, and in her form of a cobra-headed bird she hovers protectively over the king. Like Isis, she suckled and guarded the young Horus. Some bronze and faience figurines show her with her hands to her breast or nursing Horus, alluding to that role.^[10]6

For more on copper alloy statuettes, see About Copper Alloy Statuettes.7

Provenance

Martin A. Ryerson (1856–1932), Chicago, 1890; transferred to the Art Institute of Chicago, 1892.8

Publication History

Thomas George Allen, A Handbook of the Egyptian Collection (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1923), 104.
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